Donald Sutherland: A life of movies in 24 hours

Sadly, the world lost one of the best and longest running actors, and a super cool human being, who also happens to be Canadian, making him even cooler. As I am not good at writing obituaries and, seeing as I never actually met him, I figured I would do what I know how to do, and make a 24 hour marathon to celebrate him as much as I could. There are 1440 minutes in a day:

We’ll start with the movie that created a movement and one of the most important television shows of all time, 1970’s M*A*S*H. It’s a movie that tells the tale of medical personnel in the Korean War and their struggles therein. It’s a classic dark comedy that tries to shed a bit of comedic ventures into a wholly not funny scenario. Sutherland is joined by an ensemble cast, including Elliot Gould, Tom Skerritt and Robert Duvall. One of the best dark comedies, and movies, of all time. 1324 minutes remaining.

From there, we take a jump from Korea to Britain, with 1967’s The Dirty Dozen. Sutherland is joined by arguably one of the biggest and best casts ever, with Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, NFLer Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, George Kennedy and many more. It’s a re-envisioning of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai, about a group of 12 criminals in the military who become heroes. Definitely not a comedy and definitely one of the best. 1174 minutes remaining.

We jump from ultra serious to ultra comedic, with National Lampoon’s Animal House being released in 1978. Sutherland doesn’t plan a super big role, but a decently important one and this goes down as one of the best raunchy college comedies ever. It follows the Delta Tau Chi fraternity and their escapades through Faber College. Another huge cast, with John Belushi, Karen Allen, Tim Matheson and a young Kevin Bacon (his cinematic debut). 1065 minutes remaining.

There were two very good movies in 1991 that involved Sutherland, one revolving around JFK. This movie, Backdraft, does not, it revolves around some firefighters and their struggles with each other, life and… well, fighting fires. Sutherland plays an arsonist who has a copycat criminal starting fires around the city of Chicago. The visuals in this movie are astounding, even to this day. Probably my favourite movie of this list. 928 minutes remaining.

Can’t make a marathon about his movies without including one of the weirder choices, that made not a lot of money, but got such an underground swell that it made 7 seasons of a ridiculous television show. Yeah, I’m talking about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, made in 1992. Sutherland plays Merrick, a reincarnated vampire hunter trainer who trains dream woman Kristy Swanson to kill Rutger Hauer. Yeah, all of that is correct and you didn’t read it by mistake. The weirdest part of this outlandishly funny movie is that both Sutherland AND Hauer are outshined by Playhouse original Paul Reubens. Writing all of this confuses me and makes me exceedingly happy. 842 minutes remaining.

In 1995, Sutherland was in a movie that created a lot of groundswell and a LOT of mixed reviews. I remember loving it but, after watching it again, I think it was a bit of a weird one. Outbreak is a “medical disaster film” (there’s a genre in there, I promise) with a weirdly large ensemble cast with Sutherland, about an outbreak of “Motaba”, a virus not unlike the Ebola virus, and how the military/civilians deal with containing this contagion (I’m pretty happy with that last bit). I believe the monkey plays the main… villain? In this movie also plays Marcel in Friends, though I could just be making that up entirely. 714 minutes remaining.

From serious to ULTRA serious, we get 1996’s A Time To Kill, a courtroom drama about a father who kills his daughters kidnappers/rapists. Even writing that made me sad, and this movie is intense. I didn’t even like watching it, it was too serious for me and, despite the fact that it’s amazing, I hope to never watch it again. Matthew McConaughey, Sanda Bullock, Kevin Spacey, Oliver Platt and Ashley Judd also star, it’s so worth it, but be prepared. 565 minutes remaining.

In the year 2000, we got a super cool cast of old fellas Sutherland, Clint Eastwood, James Garner and Tommy Lee Jones, AND James Cromwell to star in Space Cowboys, a movie about four old men test pilots who are sent into space to repair an obsolete satellite from the Soviet Union. Sutherland plays a fun and perverted old man, and it’s a very fun movie with an interesting twist that’s well worth it. Amazing to see so many old school and great actors in one place. 435 minutes remaining.

I dove back in time for this one, I wanted it to be towards the end of the marathon, because it’s such a banger of a science fiction movie. Invasion of the Body Snatchers was made in 1978, THE SAME YEAR and Animal House and definitely has a cool theme, about aliens who abandon their dying planet and start to take over, or snatch (not just a funny word) bodies from people. For a movie as old as it is, still has a great theme and is kinda creepy. 320 minutes remaining.

With only two movies to go, I chose 2007’s Adam Sandler dramatic venture of Reign Over Me, a story of how Sandler is found by an old friend, Don Cheadle and we learn one hell of a depressing story of Sandler’s life. Sutherland plays a judge preciding over a trial involving Sandler. Watch out for a tear jerker monologue from Sandler. 196 minutes remaining.

Alright, we made it. One last movie to go. I may as well pick, in some people’s eyes, the most famous movie he’s ever been in, where he plays Coriolanus Snow, a movie with such ridiculous names for characters, but one that brought a lot of people into the fantasy genre, 2012’s The Hunger Games. It stars Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen (see??), a poor girl who participates in the titular Hunger Games, an event created to pit 12 districts of Panem, a post-apocalyptic nation created from the ashes of North America, against one another. I rag on it, but love Lawrence in every way, so I let it slide.

It’s finished, with 54 minutes to spare for bathroom breaks and eating/drinking. It was difficult to limit this marathon to only 24 hours (23 and 6 minutes), but I didn’t want to overwhelm people with too much amazing cinema. I find it important to celebrate these people as much as we can, cinema is such an important part to so many people’s lives, that I don’t want classics to get lost in the ether of Hollywood. I hope you watch a few of these, and enjoy them as much as I did, and as much as I enjoyed writing this.